ABSTRACT
T h e state-of-the art in long-term forecasting has rarely been put to the test as forcefully as is currently the case. Declining real incomes, energy costs and the possibilities of future constraints in supply-changing demographics long in the making but suddenly yielding a whole new conceptualization of household function and configuration-all impose limits on the use of the past as a guide to the future. The very maturing of the industry, its coming into investment primacy, has imposed conditions of market risk, yet at the very same time unparalleled high prices are being paid for extant centers-and certainly for the construction of new ones. The period of inflation which we are involved in accounts for this latter element, but virgin areas for center development are seemingly few and far between.
